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(Disclaimer: I don't own a house, and I'm not even earning minimum wage with my freelance work.) Question. If I owned a house, and went on a long vacation outs

(Disclaimer: I don't own a house, and I'm not even earning minimum wage with my freelance work.) Question. If I owned a house, and went on a long vacation outside the country (e.g. because maybe I like travelling or something), how long would I be able to stay on vacation before the government yoinked my house due to it being empty?

littlestymaar 2y ago
If it's your main place of residence [1], I don't have issues with making it protected against the kind of mechanism we're talking about. Because you know the problem doesn't come from people going for long vacations, but from landlords hoarding houses and holding in order to never let the price go down. «Owning a house» can mean two very different things. It's either: - I'm living in a place and I don't depend on anyone for hosting me. - I hold some piece of paper that says that this particular place in the country belongs to me and if the people living there don't pay me I can call the police to get them evicted. The first one is basic human right and should be protected as such, the second one is just something enforced by the power of the state in favor of the upper class against the working class. [1] which, in many countries you need to declare to the government already, so that they know where to get you should they send the police to arrest you.
dukeyukey 2y ago
Even if you're not in it, the house is full of your possessions. I'm not seeing how this is comparable to properties that have been actually empty for decades.
- quectophoton 2y ago
  If a property is fully decorated (photos of my family, toothbrush I've used, etc), is that still considered empty? If the answer is "yes", then based on your post, the answer to my question of how long can I take a vacation for, is "decades". But if that is indeed considered empty, then what if in addition to that, every month I email someone my travel expenses and tell them to print them and to put them in some drawer in that property (maybe locked with a key or something), and also mail some cheap souvenirs and tell them to put them as decoration somewhere, is that still considered empty? (Since it has my stuff, and is continuously storing more stuff I'm purchasing.) If that is allowed, then the next question is what if my vacation is in the same country. So yeah, what kind of activity, and with what frequency, does that property have to have in order for it to not be considered empty, without leaving some kind of loophole?
  - littlestymaar 2y ago
    It's funny because most of your argument assumes setting some kind of threshold would be a problem, as if it was not exactly how fiscal rules worked already. For instance, you are paying income taxes in your “country of residence” and not in your country of vacations (unless you are an American citizen living abroad, in which case you pay it to both your country of residence and to the US), and there is a threshold that makes one country qualify as “country of residence” versus your countries of vacations.
    - quectophoton 2y ago
      Yeah I'm dumb when it comes to legal stuff, but my guess is that defining a threshold with a good balance while also not inconveniencing the common citizen wouldn't be as easy as it might first appear, at least without causing some unintended consequences that people might not think about when proposing "'just' do X". But like I said, I'm dumb when it comes to this topic.
    - labcomputer 2y ago
      > It's funny because most of your argument assumes setting some kind of threshold would be a problem, as if it was not exactly how fiscal rules worked already. But it is the crux of the problem. When establishing things like "country of residence" (or, here in the US, to which state(s) you owe taxes), the second order effects aren't the same. It's the difference between "you owe a few extra percent of your income for one year" versus "you lose your home permanently". As public policy, it is important not to expropriate someone's home simply because they had to be away for extenuating life circumstances like caring for an ailing relative for a few months. Because otherwise, you will disincentivize that behavior (and create a greater burden for the state). It's easy for you to come back with "Oh, well the competent bureaucrats in my government will simply write an exception for those who leave for a few months of eldercare because that is clearly a legitimate reason to leave your house vacant for a few months." But that is just a bandaid on an artery which creates an explosion of exceptions and exceptions to the exceptions. What happens if I need to care for my grandmother, and then something else comes up? Do I get to have two exemptions to expropriation? Can they be consecutive? What sort of documentation do I need? What if the exemption allows n days, but I need n+3? What if I had planned an m-1 days vacation (for the m vacation days exception) right before I need n days to care for my grandmother? Very quickly you will have 10,000 pages of rules that nobody understands. And you will get perverse outcomes when someone hits an edge case that wasn't quite accounted for. Or maybe you will say "put the case in front of a judge and let them exercise discretion". But now we have the problem that it is no longer really rule of law, and people with connections will always get exceptions while people without don't. So that increases the class divide because people with connections are usually rich, and middle-class people usually don't have connections.

littlestymaar 2y ago

If it's your main place of residence [1], I don't have issues with making it protected against the kind of mechanism we're talking about. Because you know the problem doesn't come from people going for long vacations, but from landlords hoarding houses and holding in order to never let the price go down. «Owning a house» can mean two very different things. It's either: - I'm living in a place and I don't depend on anyone for hosting me. - I hold some piece of paper that says that this particular place in the country belongs to me and if the people living there don't pay me I can call the police to get them evicted. The first one is basic human right and should be protected as such, the second one is just something enforced by the power of the state in favor of the upper class against the working class. [1] which, in many countries you need to declare to the government already, so that they know where to get you should they send the police to arrest you.

dukeyukey 2y ago

Even if you're not in it, the house is full of your possessions. I'm not seeing how this is comparable to properties that have been actually empty for decades.

quectophoton 2y ago
If a property is fully decorated (photos of my family, toothbrush I've used, etc), is that still considered empty? If the answer is "yes", then based on your post, the answer to my question of how long can I take a vacation for, is "decades". But if that is indeed considered empty, then what if in addition to that, every month I email someone my travel expenses and tell them to print them and to put them in some drawer in that property (maybe locked with a key or something), and also mail some cheap souvenirs and tell them to put them as decoration somewhere, is that still considered empty? (Since it has my stuff, and is continuously storing more stuff I'm purchasing.) If that is allowed, then the next question is what if my vacation is in the same country. So yeah, what kind of activity, and with what frequency, does that property have to have in order for it to not be considered empty, without leaving some kind of loophole?
- littlestymaar 2y ago
  It's funny because most of your argument assumes setting some kind of threshold would be a problem, as if it was not exactly how fiscal rules worked already. For instance, you are paying income taxes in your “country of residence” and not in your country of vacations (unless you are an American citizen living abroad, in which case you pay it to both your country of residence and to the US), and there is a threshold that makes one country qualify as “country of residence” versus your countries of vacations.
  - quectophoton 2y ago
    Yeah I'm dumb when it comes to legal stuff, but my guess is that defining a threshold with a good balance while also not inconveniencing the common citizen wouldn't be as easy as it might first appear, at least without causing some unintended consequences that people might not think about when proposing "'just' do X". But like I said, I'm dumb when it comes to this topic.
  - labcomputer 2y ago
    > It's funny because most of your argument assumes setting some kind of threshold would be a problem, as if it was not exactly how fiscal rules worked already. But it is the crux of the problem. When establishing things like "country of residence" (or, here in the US, to which state(s) you owe taxes), the second order effects aren't the same. It's the difference between "you owe a few extra percent of your income for one year" versus "you lose your home permanently". As public policy, it is important not to expropriate someone's home simply because they had to be away for extenuating life circumstances like caring for an ailing relative for a few months. Because otherwise, you will disincentivize that behavior (and create a greater burden for the state). It's easy for you to come back with "Oh, well the competent bureaucrats in my government will simply write an exception for those who leave for a few months of eldercare because that is clearly a legitimate reason to leave your house vacant for a few months." But that is just a bandaid on an artery which creates an explosion of exceptions and exceptions to the exceptions. What happens if I need to care for my grandmother, and then something else comes up? Do I get to have two exemptions to expropriation? Can they be consecutive? What sort of documentation do I need? What if the exemption allows n days, but I need n+3? What if I had planned an m-1 days vacation (for the m vacation days exception) right before I need n days to care for my grandmother? Very quickly you will have 10,000 pages of rules that nobody understands. And you will get perverse outcomes when someone hits an edge case that wasn't quite accounted for. Or maybe you will say "put the case in front of a judge and let them exercise discretion". But now we have the problem that it is no longer really rule of law, and people with connections will always get exceptions while people without don't. So that increases the class divide because people with connections are usually rich, and middle-class people usually don't have connections.